How can you not love a story like that? Yes, Mike Pettine is my kind of guy.

This is why I sympathize with his seemingly incoherent decision to start 36-year-old mostly backup quarterback Josh McCown against the Oakland Raiders rather than starting the Browns’ first-round pick last year, Heisman Trophy-winner Johnny Manziel. I don’t particularly agree with the decision. But I sympathize with it. No, it ain’t easy being a Cleveland Browns fan. But, realistically speaking, it also ain’t easy being a Cleveland Browns coach.

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Joe Posnanski writes about sports for a living, particularly baseball. Here, he writes about sports and also Springsteen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, iPads, infomercials, his idolization of Duane Kuiper, his family and magic. He lives in Charlotte with his wife Margo, two daughters Elizabeth and Katie, and their dog Westley. Joe is currently working on a book about Harry Houdini in today’s world.

5 Responses to Browns Fanhood Week 3

Yes, I think the bottom line is that coaches HAVE TO WIN NOW or they won’t be around to witness any grand future the team might have. So, if a 36 year old career backup give you a better chance to win THIS game, then that’s who you go with. It’s very short sighted. But coaches are paid to win games. The NEXT game, not games in 2017.

I’d contrast that with what the Braves are doing. They’ve publicly announced a rebuild effort, which you have to say they didn’t really want to admit (and didn’t right away) because of the impact to attendance & fan interest during the rebuild. But anyway, they acknowledged it & then extended Fredi Gonzalez’s contract by a year to give him the freedom to play “not yet ready” players & not worry about losing too much.

Now granted, the Braves waited to acknowledge the rebuilding effort publicly (even though it was obvious) until it was pretty clear that they weren’t going to win enough games this year to make the playoffs. So, maybe the Browns will make the switch after they’ve lost a few more games & are officially “playing for next year”.

The Braves were actually doing ok this season until they went into full firesale mode. They were at around .500, then started dumping veterans and went into the tank. If they had kept the team they had at the beginning of the season, they might have been at least respectable. In the long run, this might be the way to go but it remains to be seen. The ostensible notion was to be competitive by 2017, when they move into their new stadium, but I’m sort of questioning how realistic that is, given where they are now. Of course, having the new stadium perhaps provides a cushion, which might be why they set a public goal of contending by 2017 so they could insure the public funding.

I truly believe that Patience is a really underrated quality. In Minnesota it is very popular to criticize the Pohlads as cheap owners, etc; they are certainly not the best owners out there, but what the Twin Cities folks miss is that they’ve never seen a “fire-sell”, or a big salary player dumping; sure, they don’t keep all their starts like when they let Johan Santana go, but that was done in order to keep Mauer, Morneau and Nathan, understandable moves. Instead they tell their GM/manager/front office: “Do what you want, but don’t come over budget!”, which gives everybody to relax and think about the long term. This philosophy may not win you a World Series any time soon, but it is the best way to have fun regular seasons.

I believe it’s called an “in-ground pool”, not an “underground pool”, but that paragraph still made me laugh out loud from stem to stern. Looking forward to your journey through the pit of despair this season. This Bears’ fans misery looks forward to a lot of company.

I know for a fact that the Royals weren’t too thrilled all those years JoePo kept “unfairly” criticizing them, they really don’t take criticism well, they even got rid off one of their former stars because of this reason; but I’m sure they must be loving it right now. Who wouldn’t want JoePo writing about you? Here is to one day when the Browns will do well and Joe’s columns will have a much different tone!!!